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User Agreement

1. Overview

By accessing the Website, you agree to the following terms with G International.
We may amend this User Agreement and any linked information from time to time by posting amended terms on the Website, without notice to you.
The Website is an online venue where Users buy and sell Seller Services and items. Buyers and Sellers must register for an account to buy or sell Seller Services and/or items. The Website enables Users to work together online to complete and pay for Projects, buy and sell items and use the services that we provide. We are not a party to any contractual agreements between Buyer and Seller in the online venue, we merely facilitate connections between the parties.
We may, from time to time, and without notice, change or add to the Website or the information, products or services described in it. However, we do not undertake to keep the Website updated. We are not liable to you or anyone else if any error occurs in the information on the Website or if that information is not current.

This user agreement was last modified on 12 April 2021.

This agreement describes the terms and conditions which you accept by using our services or our website.

In this Agreement:

Account: The account connected with your email address. Buyer: A user who purchases Sellers Services or Products from Sellers or identifies sellers through the Website. A User may be both seller and buyer under this Agreement. Contest:  The job that is promoted by a Buyer and in respect of which a Seller can review it one or more entries on the website. Contest Brief:  the document setting out the scope of a Contest, including but not limited to items such as a design brief. Contest Handover: The agreement between the Buyer and one or more winning Seller(s) under which each Seller will transfer to the Buyer ownership of the winning entry or entries. Dispute Resolution Process: The process to be followed by Sellers & Buyers by the Dispute Resolution Services. Entrant: A Seller who has entered a Contest. G International provides organizations access to a global workforce of millions of freelancers. Gulmarg International enables large organizations to accelerate their growth for less. Gulmarg International Verified: Users have been verified under the Know your Customer and Identity Verification Policy. Inactive Account: A User Account that has not been logged into for 6 months, or other period determined by us from time to time. Intellectual Property Right: All intellectual property rights, existing worldwide and the subject matter of such rights, including:
  1. Patents, copyright, rights in circuit layouts (or similar rights), registered designs, registered and unregistered trademarks, and any right to have confidential information kept confidential.
  2. Any application or right to apply for registration of any of the rights referred to in paragraph.
  3. Whether or not such rights are registered or capable of being registered and whether existing under any laws, at common law or in equity.
Local Jobs: A service we provide to match a Buyer with a Seller about the provision of location-specific services. Milestone Payment:   A payment made by the Buyer for the provision of Seller Services under a User Contract and which will be released by the section “Milestone Payments” of these terms and conditions. Project: A job offered or awarded by a Buyer via the Website, which may include a Project or Contest listed by a Buyer, a Project awarded by a Buyer (for example through HireMe), a service bought by a Buyer from a Seller, and service awarded by a Buyer to a Seller as a result of a Contest or competition hosted via the Website. Seller:  means a User that offers and provides services or identifies as a Seller through the Website. A User may be both a Buyer and a Seller under this agreement. Seller Services:  means all services provided by a Seller. Gulmarg International Services:  means all services provided by us to you. User:  means an individual who visits or uses the Website. User Contract:
  1. This User Agreement.
  2. The code of conduct is amended from time to time.
  3. Any other contractual provisions accepted by both the Seller and Buyer uploaded to the Website, to the extent not inconsistent with the User Agreement and the Code of Conduct.
  4. The Project terms as awarded and accepted on the Website, to the extent not inconsistent with the User Agreement and the Code of Conduct.
  5. Any other material incorporated by reference from time to time.
Website: means the Websites operated by Gulmarg International and available at www.rufmich.de and any of its regional or other domains or properties, and any related Gulmarg International service, tool or application, specifically including mobile web, any iOS App and any Android App, or another access mechanism.

2. Eligibility

You will not use the Website if you:

  1. are not able to form legally binding contracts;
  2. are under the age of 16;
  3. a person barred from receiving and rendering services under the laws of Australia or other applicable jurisdiction;
  4. are suspended from using the Website; or
  5. do not hold a valid email address.

All free user accounts are associated with individuals. Login credentials should not be shared by users with others. The individual associated with the account will be held responsible for all actions taken by the account, without limitation.

Subject to your local laws, a person over 15 but under 18 can use an adult’s account with the permission of the account holder. However, the account holder is responsible for all actions taken by the account, without limitation.

Users may provide a business name or a company name, which is associated with the User’s Account. Users acknowledge and agree that where a business name or company name is associated with their Account, this User Agreement is a contract with the User as an individual (not the business or company) and Users remain solely responsible for all activity undertaken in respect of their Account.

A company, corporation, trust, partnership or other non-individual corporate entity may be a User subject to an eligible corporate account that pays corporate subscriptions.

We may, at our absolute discretion, refuse to register any person or entity as a User.

You cannot transfer or assign any rights or obligations you have under this agreement without prior written consent.

3. Using Gulmarg International GmbH

While using the Website, you will not attempt to or otherwise do any of the following:

  1. post content or items in inappropriate categories or areas on our Websites and services;
  2. infringe any laws, third party rights or our policies;
  3. fail to deliver payment for services delivered to you;
  4. fail to deliver Seller Services purchased from you;
  5. circumvent or manipulate our fee structure, the billing process, or fees owed to Freelancer;
  6. post false, inaccurate, misleading, deceptive, defamatory or offensive content (including personal information);
  7. take any action that may undermine the feedback or reputation systems (such as displaying, importing or exporting feedback information or using it for purposes unrelated to the Website);
  8. transfer your Gulmarg International account (including feedback) and Username to another party without our consent;
  9. distribute or post spam, unsolicited, or bulk electronic communications, chain letters, or pyramid schemes;
  10. distribute viruses or any other technologies that may harm G International, the Website, or the interests or property of Gulmarg International users (including their Intellectual Property Rights, privacy and publicity rights) or is unlawful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, invasive of privacy, vulgar, obscene, profane or which may harass or cause distress or inconvenience to, or incite hatred of, any person;
  11. download and aggregate listings from our website for display with listings from other websites without our express written permission, “frame”, “mirror” or otherwise incorporate any part of the Website into any other website without our prior written authorization;
  12. attempt to modify, translate, adapt, edit, decompile, disassemble, or reverse engineer any software programs used by us in connection with the Website;
  13. copy, modify or distribute rights or content from the Website or Freelancer’s copyrights and trademarks; or
  14. Harvest or otherwise collect information about Users, including email addresses, without their consent.
  15. use Freelancer to facilitate money exchange including, but not limited to, cryptocurrency (e.g. bitcoin, ethereum, etc).

4. Intellectual Property Rights Infringement

It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged intellectual property rights infringement. Our Copyright Infringement Policy is designed to make submitting notices of alleged infringement to us as straightforward as possible while reducing the number of notices that we receive that are fraudulent or difficult to understand or verify. If you believe that your Intellectual Property Rights have been violated, please notify us via this link on our Website and we will investigate.

5. Fees and Services

We charge fees for certain services, such as introduction fees for Projects, listing upgrades and memberships. When you use a service that has a fee, you have an opportunity to review and accept the fees that you will be charged based on our schedule of Charges, which we may change from time to time and will update by placing on our Website. We may choose to temporarily change the fees for our services for promotional events (for example, discounts on memberships) or new services, and such changes are effective when we post a temporary promotional event or new service on the Websites, or as notified through promotional correspondence.

6. Referral Program

For a limited promotional period, G-International will provide site credits or reduced fees limited to certain users as a reward for referrals of new Buyer users. The promotion is based on existing users of the website (“Referrers”) referring new Buyer users (“Referees”) to post their first job. In some cases, the credit may be given in the form of coupon links or codes, where the Referrer in that case is the website itself.

This is subject to the following conditions:

  1. The Referrer must be an existing user of the Website.
  2. All members of the program, referrer and referees are subject to all other terms and conditions of the website, which in case of dispute, are held above this section.
  3. All members of the program must be over the age of 16 years.
  4. Referees must be referred using the specific promotional links on https://www.xxxxxx.com/give or https://www.xxxxx.com/no-commission or via links in email or other promotional correspondence specific to this promotion.
  5. Users may be asked to verify payment or other user information before receiving the credit.
  6. Any site credit that has been given with this promotion may expire at any time determined by the Company.
  7. Referrers will receive credit when the relevant matching Referee user fully releases a minimum of $50 worth of milestone payments concerning a new Project or awards the prize concerning a new Contest.
  8. This site credit may only be used to establish a milestone payment, fund a prize for a new Contest, or payment of site Project or Contest fees.
  9. Freelancer reserves the right to review classifications of Referees as new Buyers for this promotion, to ensure fair use of this promotion. To be eligible for this promotion, Referees must not have had any active account on Freelancer from which payment was made within the six (6) months immediately before creating the new account.
  10. Freelancer may require that both parties fill in and complete their profiles and/or pass identity checks before payments are released.
  11. This promotion may be withdrawn for a specific user or set of users, if significant reversals, fraud or chargebacks are observed, if Freelancer believes that there is a risk of funds being subject to reversal or chargeback, in cases of disputes between Referee and Referrer, or for any other reason.
  12. For any specific Referrer user, Freelancer may choose to cap the maximum value of site credit accrued by an individual or collection of users.
  13. Freelancer reserves the right to disallow the use of this promotion in its sole and absolute discretion, concerning fair use of this promotion, or to prevent any suspected fraud.
  14. Freelancer reserves the right to require submission of further information from any party applying to make use of this promotion, for investigating fraud and for risk management and related purposes, in particular, to request evidence of bona fide work being done about any Project or Contest funded with the site credit.
  15. Freelancer reserves the right to cancel or amend this promotion at any time.
  16. Freelancer reserves the right to cancel the promotion in any region if it is deemed or becomes unlawful to offer the promotion to any resident of that region.
  17. Freelancer reserves the right to cap the total site credit available under the program.
  18. Any site credit may not be duplicated, sold, traded or transferred in any manner, including but not limited to being withdrawn for cash.
  19. Freelancer reserves the right to reverse credit earned if it determines that the referrers or referees are not acting as users of the site in good faith.
  20. Referrals should have unique payment sources to qualify the parent for the referral credit.
  21. Bonus credit is only reserved for referring users who act at all times in good faith and who signed up to the site with the actual intent of using the website for its intended purposes.
  22. Freelancer reserves the right to remove credit or remove users from participating in the program if the company determines the users to be acting in bad faith and are abusing the program.
  23. The decisions of management are final. No correspondence will be entered into.
  24. Management, employees of Freelancer and its related companies are not eligible to participate in this program.
  25. Any term or condition in these terms found to be void, unenforceable or illegal may be severed and the remaining terms and conditions will continue in full force and effect.
  26. Freelancer reserves the right to set the bonus credits for each referrer and individual referral users and to release said bonus credit in any currency the company sees fit.
  27. Freelancer is not liable for any loss or damage whatsoever which is suffered (including but not limited to, direct or consequential loss) or for any personal injury suffered or sustained in connection with entry into the competition or acceptance of the prize.

7. Credit Promotions

This section related to all promotions of free site credit provided under any program, including but not limited to the Referral Program, and other site or email promotions.

From time to time, Freelancer may provide site credits (for example US$20 off your next project) limited to certain users as a promotion. In these cases, the credit may be given in the form of coupon links or codes, emails, SMS or advertisements.

This is subject to the following conditions:

  1. All members of the program are subject to all other terms and conditions of the website, which in case of dispute, this section will prevail over.
  2. All members of the program must be over the age of 16 years.
  3. Users may be asked to verify payment or other user information before receiving the credit.
  4. Any site credit that has been given about this promotion may expire at any time determined by the Company.
  5. Any site credit will expire no longer than 30 days unless otherwise written on the promotion.
  6. This site credit may only be used to establish a milestone payment, fund a prize for a new Contest, or payment of site fees including but not limited to project fees, contest fees, upgrades and memberships.
  7. Freelancer may require that redeeming users fill in and complete their profiles and/or pass identity checks before payments are released.
  8. This promotion may be withdrawn for a specific user or set of users, if significant reversals, fraud or chargebacks are observed, if Freelancer believes that there is a risk of funds being subject to reversal or chargeback, in cases of disputes, or for any other reason.
  9. For any specific user, Freelancer may choose to cap the maximum value of site credit accrued by an individual or collection of related individuals.
  10. For the avoidance of any doubt, no individual or collection of related individuals may accumulate more than US$5,000 of site credit.
  11. Freelancer reserves the right to disallow the use of this promotion in its sole and absolute discretion, for fair use of this promotion, or to prevent any suspected fraud.
  12. Freelancer reserves the right to require submission of further information from any party applying to make use of this promotion, for investigating fraud and for risk management and related purposes, in particular, to request evidence of bona fide work being done to any Project or Contest funded with the site credit.
  13. Freelancer reserves the right to cancel or amend this promotion at any time.
  14. Freelancer reserves the right to cancel the promotion in any region if it is deemed or becomes unlawful to offer the promotion to any resident of that region.
  15. Freelancer reserves the right to cap the total site credit available under the program.
  16. For the avoidance of any doubt, the total site credit available under any program is capped to US$20,000.
  17. Any site credit may not be duplicated, sold, traded or transferred in any manner, including but not limited to being withdrawn for cash.
  18. Freelancer reserves the right to remove credit or remove users from participating in the program if the company determines the users to be acting in bad faith and are abusing the program.
  19. The decisions of management are final. No correspondence will be entered into.
  20. Management, employees of Freelancer and its related companies are not eligible to participate in this program.
  21. Any term or condition in these terms found to be void, unenforceable or illegal may be severed and the remaining terms and conditions will continue in full force and effect.
  22. Freelancer reserves the right to set the bonus credits for each user and to release said bonus credit in any currency the company sees fit.
  23. Freelancer is not liable for any loss or damage whatsoever which is suffered (including but not limited to, direct or consequential loss) or for any personal injury suffered or sustained in connection with entry into the competition or acceptance of the prize.

8. Taxes

You are responsible for paying any taxes, including any goods and services or value-added taxes, which may be applicable depending on the jurisdiction of the services provided.
Depending on your residency or location, you may be subject to certain ad valorem or other taxes (for example, GST in Australia), on certain fees that we charge. These taxes will be added to fees billed to you, if applicable.
You acknowledge that you must comply with your obligations under income tax provisions in your jurisdiction.
Certain Sellers who are either registered or required to be registered for GST may be required to charge GST to Australian Consumers on certain projects. You will be notified and asked to confirm on award/accept of such projects the appropriate GST treatment.

9. Payment Administration Agent

You acknowledge and agree that we may in our sole discretion, from time to time, appoint our related bodies corporate, affiliates, or any other third party to act as our agent to accept or make payments (including merchant facilities) from or to Users on our behalf.
If your payment is made through an Ingenico Group (Global Collect) gateway in GBP, your acquiring bank will be Allied Irish Banks p.l.c. and the merchant of record will be Freelancer Outsourcing UK Limited as Payment Administration Agent under this agreement.
Such a third party will have the same rights, powers and privileges that we have under this User Agreement and will be entitled to exercise or enforce their rights, powers and privileges as our agent or in their name. In no event shall we be liable to any User for any loss, damage or liability resulting from the Payment Administration Agent’s negligence and/or acts beyond the authority given by G-International.

10. Promotion

We may display your company or business name, logo, images or other media as part of the Freelancer Services and/or other marketing materials relating to the Website, except where you have explicitly requested that we do not do this and we have agreed to such a request in writing.
You acknowledge that we may use the public description of your Projects and the content of your profile information on the Website for marketing and other related purposes.

11. Content

We do not claim ownership to your User Content; however, you grant us a non-exclusive, sublicensable, irrevocable and royalty-free worldwide license under all copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, privacy and publicity rights and other intellectual property rights to use, reproduce, transmit, print, publish, publicly display, exhibit, distribute, redistribute, copy, comment on, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works based upon, publicly perform, make available and otherwise exploit such User Content, in whole or in part, in all media formats now known or hereafter devised and on third-party sites and platforms in any number of copies and without limit as to time, manner of frequency of use, without further notice to you, and without the requirement of permission from or payment to you or any other person or entity.

You acknowledge and agree that:

  1. We act only as a forum for the online distribution and publication of User content. We make no warranty that User content is made available on the Website. We have the right (but not the obligation) to take any action deemed appropriate by us concerning your User Content.
  2. We have no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any content, whether or not the content was made available on the Website.
  3. Any content submitted to the Website is subject to our approval. We may reject, approve or modify your User content at our sole discretion.

You represent and warrant that your content:

  1. will not infringe upon or misappropriate any copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property right or proprietary right or right of publicity or privacy of any person;
  2. will not violate any law or regulation;
  3. will not be defamatory or trade libellous;
  4. will not be obscene or contain child pornography;
  5. will not contain the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons
  6. will not contain material linked to terrorist activities
  7. will not include incomplete, false or inaccurate information about User or any other individual; and
  8. will not contain any viruses or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information.

You acknowledge and agree that we may transfer your personal information to a related body corporate and your information may be transferred outside area. If you wish to withdraw your consent, you acknowledge and agree that we may be unable to provide you with access to the Website and Freelancer Services and may close your Account.

Information on the Website may contain general information about legal, financial, health and other matters. The information is not advice, and should not be treated as such. You must not rely on the information on the Website as an alternative to professional advice. If you have specific questions about any matter you should consult your professional adviser.

We provide unmonitored access to third-party content, including User feedback and articles with original content and opinions (or links to such third party content). We only act as a portal and have no liability based on, or related to, third party content on the Website, whether arising under the laws of copyright or other intellectual property, defamation, libel, privacy, obscenity, or any other legal discipline.

The Website may contain links to other third party websites. We do not control the websites to which we link from the Website. We do not endorse the content, products, services, practices, policies or performance of the websites we link to from the Website. Use of third-party content, links to third-party content and/or websites is at your risk.

Concerning deletion or hiding of any information or content, using the Website to delete, hide or otherwise dispose of information does not imply permanent deletion of content or information. Information may be retained for some time to full fill record-keeping, regulatory, compliance, statistical, law enforcement and other obligations.

12. Feedback, Reputation and Reviews

You acknowledge that you transfer copyright of any feedback, reputation or reviews you leave consisting of comments and any rating(s) (e.g. quality, communication etc.) together with any composite rating by us. You acknowledge that such feedback, reputation and reviews belong solely to us, notwithstanding that we permit you to use it on our Website while you remain a User. You must not use, or deal with, such feedback, reputation and reviews in any way inconsistent with our policies as posted on the Website from time to time without our prior written permission.

You may not do (or omit to do) anything that may undermine the integrity of the Freelancer feedback system. We are entitled to suspend or terminate your account at any time if we, in our sole and absolute discretion, are concerned by any feedback about you, or your feedback rating, where we believe our feedback system may be subverted.

Our feedback ratings belong to us and may not be used for any purpose other than facilitating the provision of Seller Services via the Website. You may not use your Seller or Buyer feedback (including, but not limited to, marketing or exporting any or all of your composite rating(s) or feedback comments) in any real or virtual venue other than a website operated by Freelancer or its related entities, without our written permission.

13. Advertising

Unless otherwise agreed with us, you must not advertise an external website, product or service on the Website. Any website address posted on the Website, including in a listing, bid, listing description, clarification board or message board, must relate to a Project, Contest, item listed, user or service being performed on the Website.
We may display advertisements or promotions on the Website. You acknowledge and agree that we shall not be responsible for any loss or damage of any kind incurred by you as a result of the presence of such advertisements or promotions or any subsequent dealings with third parties. Furthermore, you acknowledge and agree that the content of any advertisements or promotions may be protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents or other intellectual property or proprietary rights and laws. Unless expressly authorized by Freelancer or third party right holders, you agree not to modify, sell, distribute, appropriate or create derivative works based on such advertisement/promotions.

14. Communication With Other Users

Communication with other users on the Website must be conducted through the text, audio and or video chat functionality, along with message boards, public clarification boards, Project message board, direct message sending and other communication channels provided on the Website.

You must not post your email address or any other contact information (including but not limited to Skype ID or other identifying strings on other platforms) on the Website, except in the “email” field of the signup form, at our request or as otherwise permitted by us on the Website.

Unless you have a prior relationship with a User, you must only communicate with Users via the Website. You must not, and must not attempt to, communicate with other Users through any other means including but not limited to email, telephone, Skype, ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, WeChat, Snapchat, GTalk, GChat or Yahoo.

Concerning video chat and audio chat, any terms agreed to between any Users must be confirmed in writing using the chat or direct message function.

Freelancer may use information such as your name, location, display or username, and or your image, about the provision of messaging services on the Website or in the mobile apps.

We may read all correspondence posted to the Website and download or access, and test (if necessary), all uploaded files, programs and websites related to your use of the Website to investigate fraud, regulatory compliance, risk management and other related purposes.

15. User Services

Upon the Buyer awarding a Project or Contest to the Seller, and the Seller’s acceptance on the Website, or the purchase of an item by a Buyer from the Seller, the Buyer and Seller will be deemed to have entered into a User Contract under which the Buyer agrees to purchase, and the Seller agrees to deliver the Seller Services. You agree not to enter into any contractual provisions in conflict with the User Agreement.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that you comply with your obligations to other Users. If you do not, you may become liable to that User. You must ensure that you are aware of any domestic laws (including common law), international laws, statutes, ordinances and regulations relevant to you as a Buyer or Seller, or in any other uses you make of the Website.

If another User breaches any obligation to you, you are solely responsible for enforcing any rights that you may have. For the avoidance of doubt, we have no responsibility for enforcing any rights under a User Contract.

Depending on their jurisdiction, Sellers and Buyers may have rights under statutory warranties that cannot lawfully be excluded. Nothing in this User Agreement is intended to override a right that by applicable law may not be excluded. Nothing in this User Agreement is intended to violate any laws relating to unfair contracts, and this agreement has been specifically redrafted to ensure compliance with unfair contracts legislation. To the extent that any component of this User Agreement conflicts with inalienable rights under local laws, all parties intend for this agreement to be read down only insofar as to comply with such local laws and no further.

Each User acknowledges and agrees that the relationship between Buyers and Sellers is that of an independent contractor. Nothing in this User Agreement creates a partnership, joint venture, agency or employment relationship between Users. Nothing in this User Agreement shall in any way be construed as forming a joint venture, partnership or an employer-employee relationship between Freelancer and any User.

16. Special Provisions for Local Jobs

Each User acknowledges:

  1. Freelancer does not review, approve, recommend or verify any of the credentials, licences or statements of capability about Local Jobs (or, for the avoidance of doubt, any non Local Jobs on the Website);
  2. Freelancer provides matchmaking and platform services only. Users agree that Freelancer has no liability for any other aspect of service delivery or interaction between Buyer and Seller. Freelancer is not a party to any disputes between Buyer and Seller, although we provide a dispute resolution mechanism to assist the parties in resolving issues;
  3. Freelancer may from time to time include map features and Freelancer may display the location of Users to persons browsing the Website on that map. Every Buyer seeking services for Local Jobs will be asked to provide the location where the Local Job is to be performed. You expressly agree that Freelancer has no liability for displaying such information.
  4. A User must never disclose, in any Project posted, personal details such as the User’s name, street number, phone number or the email address in any Project description for a Local Job or in any other public communication on the Website (these may be disclosed for Local Jobs as required in private direct messages);
  5. Freelancer may collect location related data from you via technologies including but not limited to GPS, IP address location, wifi, and other methods. This data may be shared in the context of facilitating services for Local Jobs and each User specifically consents to this collection and sharing as part of this agreement;
  6. Upon completion of a Local Job Project, Seller User must log on to the Website and click the “Complete” button for that Local Job, as soon as practicable.
  7. Failure to complete the service or task will constitute a breach of this User Agreement; and
  8. Our fees are applied to the amount of the awarded Seller’s bid to perform the services for the Local Job. Any items purchased by the Seller as part of performing the service are between the Buyer and Seller.

17. Funds

You may have positive funds in your Account if you have prepaid for fees or charges or for services to be provided to you via the Website. If you are a Seller, you may have positive funds if you have completed a Project, or sold an item, and funds have been released to you. There are also circumstances where funds may have been credited to your Account concerning an affiliate program or a referral program.

Funds in your Account are held by us in our operating accounts held with financial institutions. Funds in your Account are not held separately by us and may be commingled with our general operating funds, and/or funds of other User’s Accounts.

You are not entitled to any interest or other earnings for funds that are in your Account.

We may receive interest on funds held by us in our operating accounts from financial institutions with whom we hold our operating accounts. Any such interest earned belongs to us and we will not be liable to any User for any imputed interest on such funds.

If your Account has negative funds, we may:

  1. set-off the negative amount with funds that you subsequently receive into your Account;
  2. if you have funds in multiple currencies in your Account and one of the currencies becomes negative for any reason, we may set off the negative amount against funds you maintain in a different currency (at an exchange rate applied by us);
  3. reverse payments you have made from your Account to other User Accounts on the Website;
  4. deduct amounts you owe us from the money you subsequently add or receive into your Account; or
  5. immediately suspend or limit your Account until your Account no longer has a negative amount.

If we offset a negative amount of funds according to this section, it may be bundled with another debit coming out of your Account.

We reserve the right to collect any funds owed to us by any other legal means.

You acknowledge and agree that:

  1. we are not a bank or other licensed financial institution and do not provide banking services or any financial services to you;
  2. the funds shown in your Account (which may include Milestone Payments subject to Section 25, and/or any prepayment of charges which you owe to us) represents our unsecured obligations to you concerning your rights to direct us to make payment concerning the purchase and sale of Seller Services through the Website and provision of the Freelancer Services;
  3. if you were a User acquired in the acquisition and your account was migrated to the Website, we are responsible for your positive funds only to the extent of the legal documentation between us and any acquired marketplace, along with this agreement, and you acknowledge specifically that the onus is on you to confirm the validity of your fund, and that any understatement or misstatement concerning this is not a claim against us, and belongs with the counterparty of any prior user agreement to which you agreed;
  4. to the extent that we are required to release funds from your Account to you, you will become our unsecured creditor until such funds are paid to you;
  5. we are not acting as a trustee or fiduciary concerning such funds or payments;
  6. the amount of funds showing in your Account is not insured and is not a guaranteed deposit;
  7. funds may only be loaded into your Account, or released from your Account, by us and you must only use the mechanisms available on the Website to pay for or receive funds in respect of Seller Services;
  8. any refunds required to be processed in your favour will be returned only to the source of the original deposit, and cannot be redirected to any other payment source;
  9. we will hold funds in respect of the amount of your Account (including Milestone Payments, subject to Section 25) in an account held by us with a financial institution (or in any manner that we decide in our sole discretion from time to time) and such funds are not segregated into a separate account; and
  10. we may commingle your funds with funds of other Users and our funds and such commingled funds could be used to pay other Users or for our general corporate purposes or otherwise, however, we will remain obliged to release or refund funds at your direction per this User Agreement.

18. Limits & Fraud Prevention

We reserve the right to suspend a User withdrawal request if the source of the funds is suspected to be fraudulent.

If we become aware that any funds received into an Account from another Account as a result of a fraudulent transaction, this will be reversed immediately. If those funds have already been released to you, you must pay the funds into your Account. If you do not do so, we may suspend, limit or cancel your account, or take action against you to recover those funds.

We may, in our sole discretion, place a limit on any or all of the funds in your Account (thereby preventing any use of the funds) if:

  1. we believe there may be an unacceptable level of risk associated with you, your Account, or any or all of your transactions, including if we believe that there is a risk that such funds will be subject to reversal or chargeback;
  2. we believe that the beneficiary of the payment is someone other than you;
  3. we believe that the payment is being made to a country where we do not offer our Service; or
  4. we are required to do so by law or applicable law enforcement agencies.

If you are involved in a dispute, we may (in certain circumstances) place a temporary limit on the funds in your Account to cover the amount of any potential liability. If the dispute is resolved in your favour, we will lift the limit on your funds and those funds may be released to you. If the dispute is not resolved in your favour, we may remove the funds from your Account. We may also place a limit on your account in circumstances where we suspect you of fraudulent or other unacceptable behaviour, while we investigate any such matter.

19. Inactive Accounts

User Accounts that have not been logged into for a while will incur a maintenance fee per month, until either the account is closed or reactivated, for storage, bandwidth, support and management costs of providing hosting of the User’s profile, portfolio storage, listing in directories, promotion of your profile on the Website and elsewhere, provision of the hire service, file storage, message transmission, general administrative matters and message and other storage costs.

The length of the period and the amount of the maintenance fee is set out in our schedule of fees.

We reserve the right to close an Inactive Account.

We reserve the right to close an account with nil or negative funds.

21. Contests

Buyers can promote a Contest hosted on the Website by providing a Contest Brief and paying the Contest Prize by our instructions provided on the Website. A Buyer acknowledges and agrees that it is solely responsible for the operation and promotion of the Contest and warrants that it will comply with all applicable law in respect of the operation and promotion of the Contest. We have no liability for loss suffered by a User in connection with a Contest including but not limited to loss suffered (or penalties imposed) in connection with any contravention of the law.
Entrants may submit their entries in image, video, text or other formats as specified on the Website. All entries must comply with the Contest Brief and must not infringe any Intellectual Property Rights. Any entry which infringes any Intellectual Property Rights will be an ineligible entry and subject to removal either by the Buyer or us and subject to action as per our Copyright Infringement Policy.
Buyers can promote either: (1) a regular prepaid Contest, under which a Buyer may select one or more winning Entrant(s) and Buyers may request that the Contest Prize be released to them if a winner has not been chosen within 30 days of the Contest closing date; or (2) a guaranteed Contest, under which a Buyer may select one or more winning Seller(s) and if no winner is selected, we will release the Contest Prize to Entrants of the guaranteed Contest and charge the appropriate fees and the Buyer will have no rights to have the Contest Prize released to them or to use any entries that have been submitted. After 30 days of the Contest closing date, we reserve the right to distribute the Contest prize to the participating Sellers.
After awarding a Contest Prize, the Buyer and winning Entrant(s) will enter into a Contest Handover and when the winning Entrant(s) has uploaded the winning entry (including all related files) to the Buyer, the Contest Prize will be released to the winner of the Contest unless disputed by the Buyer in which case the dispute must be resolved between the Buyer and winning Entrant(s) before we can release the Contest Prize to the winning Entrant(s).
For the avoidance of doubt, the Buyer has no right or licence to use any entries other than the winning entry/entries. The Buyer may not: (1) promote a Contest via the Website if the Buyer is hosting a similar Contest through another service; (2) allow or request Sellers to submit entries to the Buyer via other means than the Website; and (3) award another Account that might be deemed as collusion or awarding another Account owned by the Buyer.

20. Right to Refuse Service

We may close, suspend or limit your access to your Account without reason. Without limiting the foregoing, we may close, suspend or limit your access to your Account:

  1. if we determine that you have breached, or are acting in breach of this User Agreement;
  2. if you under-bid on any Project in an attempt to renegotiate the actual price privately, to attempt to avoid fees;
  3. if we determine that you have infringed legal rights (resulting in actual or potential claims), including infringing Intellectual Property Rights;
  4. if we determine that you have engaged, or are engaging, in fraudulent, or illegal activities;
  5. you do not respond to account verification requests;
  6. you do not completely account verification when requested within 3 months of the date of request;
  7. you are the subject of a United Nations, Australian, EU, USA or other applicable sanctions regime, or our banking and payment relationships otherwise preclude us from conducting business with you;
  8. to manage any risk of loss to us, a User, or any other person; or
  9. for other reasons.

If we close your Account due to your breach of this User Agreement, you may also become liable for certain fees as described in this User Agreement.

Without limiting our other remedies, to the extent you have breached this User Agreement, you must pay us all fees owed to us and reimburse us for all losses and costs (including any of our employee time) and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) related to investigating such breach and collecting such fees.

You acknowledge and agree that: (1) the damages that we will sustain as a result of your breach of this User Agreement will be substantial and will potentially include (without limitation) fines and other related expenses imposed on us by our payment processors and Users and that those damages may be extremely difficult and impracticable to ascertain; (2) if you breach this User Agreement, we may find you up to US$3,000 for each breach and/or we may take legal action against you to recover losses that are in excess of the fine amount; (3) a fine of up to US$3,000 is a presently reasonable pre-estimate or minimum estimate of our damages, considering all currently existing circumstances, including (without limitation) the relationship of the sum to the range of harm to us that reasonably could be anticipated and the anticipation that proof of actual damages may be impractical or extremely difficult; and (4) we may release the entire (or part of the) amount of the fine from your Account to us.

If we close your Account for a reason other than as a result of your breach of this User Agreement unless as otherwise specified in this User Agreement, you will be entitled to receive any payment due from us to you.

If we close your Account, you will have no claim whatsoever against us in respect of any such suspension or termination of your Account.

21. Access and Interference

You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access the Website via any means, including for the avoidance of doubt access to our API or application programming interface, for any purpose without our express written permission.

Additionally, you agree that you will not:

  1. take any action that imposes or may impose (in our sole discretion, exercised reasonably) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;
  2. interfere with, damage, manipulate, disrupt, disable, modify, overburden, or impair any device, software system or network connected to or used (by you or us) with the Website or your Account, or assist any other person to do any of these things, or take any action that imposes, or may impose, in our discretion, an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;
  3. copy, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, or publicly display any content (except for your information) from the websites without the prior express written permission of Freelancer and the appropriate third party, as applicable;
  4. interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Websites, services or tools, or any activities conducted on or with the Websites, services or tools; or
  5. bypass our robot exclusion headers or other measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to the Website.

22. Closing Your Account

You may close your Account at any time. The option is located in the Account Settings.

Account closure is subject to:

  1. not having any outstanding listings on the Website;
  2. resolving any outstanding matters (such as a suspension or restriction on your Account); and
  3. paying any outstanding fees or amounts owing on the Account.

We may retain some of your personal information to satisfy regulatory requirements and our external obligations. Closing your account does not necessarily delete or remove all of the information we hold.

23. Privacy

We use your information as described in the Freelancer Privacy Policy. If you object to your information being transferred or used in this way then you must not use our services. For the avoidance of doubt, your name and personal details shall be used for identity purposes in the normal course of conducting business in this online marketplace. This may include invoices and purchase orders including but not limited to between transacting parties, including those automatically generated on awarding, accepting and payment.

24. Security

You must immediately notify us upon becoming aware of any unauthorised access or any other security breach to the Website, your Account or the Freelancer Services and do everything possible to mitigate the unauthorised access or security breach (including preserving evidence and notifying appropriate authorities). Your User Account is yours only, and you must not share your password with others. You are solely responsible for securing your password. We will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from unauthorised access to your account resulting from your failure to secure your password.

25. No Warranty as to Each User's Purported Identity

We cannot and do not confirm each User’s purported identity on the Website. We may provide information about a User, such as a strength or risk score, geographical location, or third party background check or verification of identity or credentials. However, such information is based solely on data that a User submits and we provide such information solely for the convenience of Users and the provision of such information is not an introduction, endorsement or recommendation by us.

26. No Warranty as to Content

The Website is a dynamic time-sensitive Website. As such, information on the Website will change frequently. It is possible that some information could be considered offensive, harmful, inaccurate or misleading or mislabelled or deceptively labelled accidentally by us or accidentally or purposefully by a third party.

Our Services, the Website and all content on it are provided on an ‘as is, ‘with all faults’ and ‘as available basis and without warranties of any kind either express or implied. Without limiting the foregoing, we make no representation or warranty about:

  1. the Website or any Seller Services or Freelancer Services;
  2. the accuracy, reliability, availability, veracity, timeliness or content of the Website or any Seller Services or Freelancer Services;
  3. whether the Website or Seller Services or Freelancer Services will be up-to-date, uninterrupted, secure, error-free or non-misleading;
  4. whether defects in the Website will be corrected;
  5. whether the Website, the Seller Services or the Freelancer Services or any data, content or material will be backed up or whether business continuity arrangements are in place in respect of the Website, Seller Services or Freelancer Services;
  6. any third party agreements or any guarantee of business gained by you through the Website, Seller Services or Freelancer Services or us; or
  7. the Website, Seller Services or Freelancer Services or infrastructure on which they are based, being error or malicious code free, secure, confidential or performing at any particular standard or having any particular function.

To every extent permitted by law, we specifically disclaim any implied warranties of title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, quality, suitability and non-infringement.

27. Additional Terms

It is important to read and understand all our policies as they provide the rules for trading on the Freelancer Website. Also, there may be specific policies or rules that apply, and it is your responsibility to check our Help pages and policies to make sure you comply. Our policies, including all policies referenced in them, are part of this Agreement and provide additional terms and conditions related to specific services offered on our Websites, including but not limited to:
Each of these policies may be changed from time to time. Changes take effect when we post them on the Freelancer Website. When using particular services on our Website, you are subject to any posted policies or rules applicable to services you use through the Website, which may be posted from time to time. All such policies or rules are incorporated into this User Agreement.

28. Abusing Freelancer

Freelancer reserves to the greatest extent possible all rights, without limiting any other remedies, to limit, suspend or terminate our service(s) and or user account(s), suspend or ban access to our services, remove any content, and take any technical or legal steps to ban users.

Without limiting the reasons for taking the aforementioned actions, the conduct giving rise to this response could include:

  1. use of our services for any illegitimate or non-bona fide purpose
  2. creating problems with other users or potential legal liabilities
  3. infringing the intellectual property rights of third parties
  4. acting inconsistently with the letter or spirit of any of our policies
  5. abuse of any staff members including inappropriate or unreasonable communications
  6. abuse or poor performance in the Preferred Freelancer Program
  7. any attempt to use Freelancer’s platform or services for any objectionable purpose